


Portrait

by ricochetdays (elodiej)



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 01:11:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elodiej/pseuds/ricochetdays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A set of portraits of hunters and the hunted, and the wishes they made. Secret Santa for pickingmeapartagain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Portrait

**Author's Note:**

> All quotes taken from T.S. Eliot poetry, with the exception of the Sybil passage which is my own loose translation of the Waste Land epigraph. I like my interpretation better than the literal one. Poems used are The Waste Land, Portrait of a Lady, and La Figlia Che Piange. All character titles are from the Waste Land, and if anyone would like to discuss why I chose them please do ask/comment. It's not necessary to be familiar with the poems to understand the fic, though.

I  
Madame Sosostris  
 _I came upon Sybil of Cumae, hanging in a bottle,  
_ _and the boys said to her, Sybil, what do you wish?_

  
First, there is the Shop, and there is the Shopkeeper.  
  
“We wish to have the means to escape from that man,” Kamui says, chin high and hand wrapped vicelike around his brother’s. Subaru says nothing, eyes low and still.  
  
The Shopkeeper, inscrutable, draped in long silk, continues smoking. This bothers the louder twin, but he will not comment and the Shopkeeper will not defer. “He will go through any lengths to find you again. You will have to leave the world you know, and travel from one to the next. The price of this wish is very high.”  
  
“We will pay that price,” Subaru says, without prompting. “We will pay whatever price is necessary.”  
  
The Shopkeeper looks at Kamui. “And you, will you pay the price of your wish? You want to deter him, but this is your wish, and you must pay an additional price.”  
  
“I will pay too!” Kamui says, anger rising in his throat. “I’ll pay anything, if it will throw that _man_ off of our tracks."  
  
Customers, always so single-minded, and willing to give any price without first knowing the worth of their wish. "Your price, Subaru, will be your blood, which is valuable for its rarity and its properties. And Kamui, your wish is also to erase the tracks you have made from your pursuer, and so your price will be to give up as much of your own as you wish to erase."  
  
Subaru steps forward - his brother seething behind him, too distracted with concern for another to truly comprehend what his own wish will cost, so hotheaded - and presents his arm to the Shopkeeper, who withdraws from one deep sleeve a wide-necked vial, which is held out for Subaru. With one quick extension of the fingers and sharp flick of the wrist, the cut is made and blood collected.  
  
"Your price is paid," says the Shopkeeper. "And yours -"  
  
Kamui's eyes flash bright once like a crash, but return as they were again.  
  
"Has also been paid." The Shopkeeper stands. "You now possess the ability to cross dimensions with the pendant you wear; to use it you must be present together. There will be a dimension among the places you will visit, where you will be involved in the prices of another."  
  
The pendant begins to glow, and simultaneously the twins look to the Shopkeeper. "Thank you," Subaru begins to say, as the magic engulfs them.  
  
"Fear death by water," says the Shopkeeper, a last warning lost in the wind.

II  
Mr. Eugenides  
 _"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,  
_ _And youth is cruel, and has no remorse  
_ _And smiles at situations which it cannot see."_

  
Then there is a name, and nothing more.  
  
In his third world and when he is twenty, Seishiro takes up smoking. It's dangerous, he knows, to acquire an affection for substances which are not universal constants, but curiosity gets the better of him and pride tells him it will be easy to get rid of, so he purchases a single pack of Mild Sevens from the convenience store which is next to the apartment in which he is staying. The cheap lighter he buys as an afterthought, having nearly forgotten it, has cherry blossoms decorating it. It is a little embarrassing - a bright pink sore against his usual monochrome disposition - but he comes to decide that it suits him, anyway.  
  
He’s surprised to find the first cigarette does not burn, but he is more surprised on his third when he realizes he hasn’t been doing it right at all and has a blessedly private coughing fit after trying to exhale through his nose. Things go much more smoothly after that.  
  
Unfortunately, this is all he learns in this drab urban world, and he is glad to leave it when he finds no trace of the one after whom he is chasing. The cigarettes - damned if he will admit - put the qualms about his situation to rest. He has only the knowledge of vampire blood in his veins and an incomprehensible name on his lips, no memories of a critical event which by all rights ought to be burned into him. In pursuit of this knowledge he gave up an eye, and for the sake of this he moves on from one world to the next, chasing that which he cannot place. It is this which will propel him through innumerable worlds, across many paths and through many hardships.  
  
These are things he does not know yet, burning his lungs for nicotine on a rusted-out rooftop in a world so unlike his own. But he will learn; by god, will he learn.  
  
He buys one last pack before he leaves, and keeps it in his pocket. It lasts him four more worlds, and the withdrawal makes the fifth a hell. That itself is another kind of challenge, which he accepts with the dramatic grace of one who is not being observed. There, he meets a half-blind boy who impresses him with tenacity and determination; Seishiro takes him as his pupil, with a feeling like the kismet of a wish shop dogging him like phantom pains in his left eye. In between he learns about the one he seeks, and begins to put the pieces of his fractured memories back together. Not once does he regret his journey, and in the midst of the chase a kind of plan begins to take form and solidifies his resolve.  
  
He will continue to search across the worlds for his Subaru, his fleeting name, and at the end of a cigarette Seishiro smiles and decides.

III  
The Hyacinth Girl  
 _Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—  
_ _Fling them to the ground and turn  
_ _With a fugitive resentment in your eyes_

  
Later in Tokyo an arrangement is made, unexpectedly.  
  
Sometimes Kamui, in a fit of self-centered cynicism, wonders if this world called Tokyo is the real price for his selfish wish to escape. Particularly he finds himself thinking this when there is trouble with the group from the ancient Government Building, and with alarming frequency when Fuuma is leading that trouble. There is something especially bothersome about this, but Kamui is usually too murderous to think it through, as is the case now. He had stormed off on his own, at first, a rare break in his constant vigil for his slumbering brother. But he had realized without a break he could have endangered the situation further, so he had left. Fuuma's interference here however, as usual, is not something he anticipates.  
  
"Now what are you doing so far away from home? Are you lost?" Fuuma calls from around a boulder, gun in hand, glasses on. That irritates Kamui, too, the way he barges in so casually like he'd meant to. "You'll get yourself hurt if you're not careful."  
  
Kamui doesn't respond to that - what point is there to argue with those who won't listen, anyway - but he does tense up in anticipation, and his eyes go wide and yellow, which apparently means close enough to the same thing as "hello I'm glad you're here" to his sworn enemy in this place. Fuuma comes closer, though he has the good sense to holster his gun as he does. That's comforting in its own way, given earlier encounters, which on one level should be upsetting because Kamui should not be thinking of a weapon like that as a good omen, especially when its owner is the worst luck he's had in decades. But of course the part of Kamui that is capable of caring is buried in water some miles away and Fuuma is already trying to coax conversation again.  
  
"You're not here for business, it seems, so pleasure it is," he says. "Looking for a punching bag, are we?"  
  
That gets a rise out of Kamui, a small twitch of the mouth which would have been insignificant were the players of this dangerous game anyone other than the two they are. "Haven't you got anyone else to harass?" Kamui says, the twitch verging on a sneer now and his hands drawn up defensively in front of his torso.  
  
Fuuma smiles, all practiced grace, and it makes Kamui wish there was a fist in that smile. There almost is, but Fuuma dodges at the last second, smile still on, though Kamui sees the surprise he cannot - that he never can - hide flash as his nails skim Fuuma's cheek. "Ah, but no one here is quite as interesting as you are, _dear_."  
  
The endearment deserves another punch, but Fuuma expects that so instead Kamui hooks one of his legs around Fuuma's and sends Fuuma crashing to the acid sand back-first. Kamui is the one smiling now, which inexplicably makes the corners of Fuuma's mouth quirk up, but the areas around his eyes are tense and his face is done up in more of a snarl than a smirk now, which suits Kamui just fine. Fuuma rolls to his left to dodge another blow, and pushes himself upright with a grace that is not superhuman but still impressive, especially after the powerful kick Kamui had delivered to the lower-right side of his ribcage and the way he favors that side just briefly before straightening again.  
  
"I grant that was a clever one, but you could do a lot better." Fuuma jabs at him once, twice, connects wtih Kamui's jaw with a pop and a crack. "You're sluggish today." He lands another in Kamui's gut. "Is that one of the reasons you're out here? I bet you won't feed on any of the people there, will you. Maybe you do have a heart after all. But still, you really ought to take better care of yourself. You can always come to me for help." In the moment that it takes Kamui to recover - fuck's sake, it is _none_ of Fuuma's business but what's worst is that he's right, he's right and Kamui sees him for twenty minutes tops on a bad week, and that makes him furious - Fuuma steps back and wipes the blood from his cheek with the pad of his thumb, and licks it.  
  
There is a kind of nebulous insinuation which Kamui cannot decipher in that action, but he does know it's meant to hurt. So he throws a series of quick punches, two of which are blocked and the third of which is intercepted at the wrist at the same time Fuuma reaches for Kamui's other hand and pins it behind Kamui's back. He takes the hand which had just been aiming for his throat and placed it flat against his chest, and pulled the backward-bent arm up higher on Kamui's back so that Kamui stumbles further into him in a kind of pained embrace.  
  
With his hand pressed up against Fuuma's heart and Fuuma's hand shackled to his wrist, Kamui realizes that although Fuuma can only best him once out of every ten moves Kamui throws at him, Fuuma is learning to survive the nine in order to reverse the tenth, and the familiarity that this suggests alarms him only slightly less than his immediate physical predicament.  
  
"If you really wanted to kill me, you know," Fuuma says, looking straight down into Kamui's slit-pupil eyes, the blood on his cheek smeared and dirtied with sand, "you ought to aim here."  
  
Kamui wrenches his back hand away, and Fuuma lets him go entirely.  
  
The state of the game, Kamui decides, is not at all acceptable. So he moves again to make a strike at Fuuma's face but instead of connecting there he throws his arm over Fuuma's shoulder - damn that insufferable height difference - and uses that momentum to barrel them both into the rounded, weather-eaten boulder not two feet behind Fuuma. Fuuma's back hits the rock with a thud, and Kamui deftly puts mouth to neck and bites down, hard. Judging by the way Fuuma's lower body jerks forward but his head remains preternaturally still, Kamui takes satisfaction in knowing that Fuuma has correctly interpreted the message to be 'you're more useful to me alive than dead,' and the lack of resistance he takes as acquiescance, or something close enough. He wonders if Fuuma can feel the trace of a self-satisfied smile along his neck or if the pain and ecstacy of having one's blood drunk is enough to distract him.  
  
Apparently it certainly isn't so distracting Fuuma looses himself completely, because after the initial shock Fuuma's hands work their way beneath Kamui's cloak to claw at the sliver of bare skin where Kamui's shirt and pants separate. Kamui draws back - feeling considerably more robust and far more confident - and watches the fog clear from Fuuma's eyes before returning for a moment to lick up the stray trail of blood that remained. His right arm is still thrown over Fuuma's shoulder to keep him down at a more manageable height, and his left hand is on the other side of Fuuma's neck as an incentive to remain still. But the blood loss is a more effective paralytic and Fuuma starts to slide down the rock. Kamui follows suit.  
  
So he does the stupid thing, because Fuuma deserves stupidity, and kisses him, hard, so that Fuuma's head hits the rock. Fuuma bites his tongue at the first opportunity, which hurts like a bitch but it's fair and he's healing fast again anyway. The hands that had been gripping his lower back are now sliding lower, and now Kamui is smiling viciously because this is just another kind of fight. Perhaps Fuuma is good for something, after all, he thinks.

IV  
The Hanged Man  
 _There will be time, there will be time  
_ _To prepare a face to meet the face that you meet  
_ _Time to murder and create_

The cigarettes come as a surprise.  
  
“The ashes will fall on your hands,” Seishiro says, one eye soft and one so blank. Subaru is standing in front of him, a little to Seishiro’s right, his hands cupped around one of Seishrio’s, paying no mind to the unfamiliar cigarette it holds. The bridge is otherwise deserted, an eerie pocket of silence in this new Tokyo, so strange and yet so familiar after leaving the waste land in which he had slept for so long.  
  
Subaru does not move, his hand grasping Seishiro’s with such misleading gentility. “Are you worrying about me?” he says, eyes on the cigarette and away from Seishiro’s face.  
  
“I’ve been changed. By you, I suppose,” Seishiro says, and his smile is so wide and perfectly rehearsed it hits Subaru from the edge of his vision in ways he had thought he’d forgotten. “You killed someone here, haven’t you?”  
  
It shouldn’t bother him, Subaru knows, and he should not be hurt by that which  he had no choice in being and something with which he deals so carefully, so deliberately, as not to hurt any living soul; but nonetheless sharing that knowledge with Seishiro is another kind of pain for which he does not care. "Game." Soulless shells, he reminds himself. He pulls away, and forces his gaze up from the grey stone of the bridge to Seishiro’s face. That, too, is a heavy pain in his chest. “Because I am a vampire.”  
  
Seishiro steps away, and so Subaru extends his claws with a flick of his wrist and another shot in his chest. It's a test and a threat when Seishiro lunges at him, and Subaru wonders whether he's passed or failed when he simply sidesteps, taking care to avoid any contact. Seishiro throws a right hook, which is blocked, and a jab with his left to Subaru's ribcage, which is not.  
  
Something like anger wells up in Subaru's stomach, so he responds not with a step but with a strike of the hand at Seishiro's neck. It misses but hits Seishiro's shoulder with enough force that Subaru hears a disconcerting kind of popping noise. More worrisome is Seishiro's look of strained amusement as he rolls his neck and his shoulder pops again, this time into place, already healing. Belatedly, Subaru remembers the cause of it all - his thoughtless, impulsive decision to save a life - and uses that time to jump backwards onto the metal railing which separates the edge of the bridge from the water below. Subaru retracts his claws but does not untense. "Your brother said you were looking for me, and that your wish is not what we think it is." Seishiro gazes up at him just below the ledge, infuriatingly at peace and unreadable. "Your desire is not to kill me, and my brother?"  
  
At the same instant Subaru finishes speaking, Seishiro's eyes tighten and he grabs Subaru's wrist and pulls hard so that Subaru is thrown off balance and falls forward. Before Subaru can react, Seishiro  uses his other hand to seize Subaru by the throat, carrying that momentum forward and letting Subaru hang there so that his toes scrape the ground. Subaru knows that he cannot die like this, that this can only be a kind of macabre prelude - and he thinks that by the look in Seishiro's eye, Seishiro knows this too. Subaru relaxes there.  
  
"No," Seishiro says, slowly. Subaru is just far up enough that their eyes are on the same level, and he cannot avoid those eyes (his fault, his fault). For a hysterical moment he wonders if Seishiro will kiss him here with Subaru eternally half-strangled, but they remain like that, on an absurd precipice, Subaru's windpipe trying to heal itself only to be constricted once more, Seishiro with his eye gone and hand still and solid like death around Subaru's throat. "No, it's not," he says in Subaru's ear, low and intimate. His lips brush Subaru's earlobe as he pulls back to study his face.  
  
And then Seishiro drops him with a little thrust forward, away from himself.  
  
“Go now,” he says, and his face is the most perfectly blank Subaru  has ever seen. That hurts, like Subaru has failed some kind of test. “Your brother will be missing you. We wouldn’t want to cause a scene, would we?”  
  
“Seishiro-san,” Subaru says, wanting to plead, but he can still feel the ghost of Seishiro’s fingers around his neck and only manages his name.  
  
“Go now and leave me!” Seishiro says as he puts his glasses on.  
  
The smile is dissonant, a wrong note, because there’s a seriousness in his voice that betrays something more, something Subaru suspects he shouldn’t touch just yet. And when Seishiro begins to summon his familiar hawk-figure, Subaru does as Seishiro says and leaves the haunting bridge to tell his brother that it’s time to leave though he does not know how to explain why, because he does not understand how Seishiro does not want to kill him, cannot imagine any other reason why someone would give up an eye just for the opportunity to find him again. Even if Seishiro had lied, Subaru cannot understand why Seishiro let him go, when he could have finished everything them right there on that bridge, sent the whole thing up in smoke and washed his hands of the affair after.

V  
The Merchant  
 _And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,  
_ _Which is blank, is something he carries on his back,  
_ _Which I am forbidden to see._

  
Seven worlds for him after the Tokyo debacle, and two after delivering the other part of his wish’s price to the ninja in Nihon, there is a kind of reunion.  
  
Fuuma finds Kamui and his brother before he knows Seishiro is there, too. He’s looking for a particular holy relic for Yuuko, one he’s heard is supposed to be hidden in a cathedral just on the outskirts of the city where he landed. It’s small enough, a rural town that has faded in recent years from the merchant haven it was to the sleepy hamlet it is now. The architecture of centuries past remains, though, and Fuuma thinks maybe it’s nice to have a job where he’s not being shot at or shooting someone else.  
  
Of course jobs for Yuuko are never so peaceful, although to be fair Fuuma can’t say he expected his old rival to be the one to stop him from actually nicking the grail. It had taken him a week to figure out where, exactly, in the old church it was. The church hasn’t been used in decades, remaining mostly for its aesthetic value and its connection to the curious old myth of the grail which was a local pride and embarrassment. And his favorite vampire twins had just shown up there, right as he was planning a way to safely store the thing itself.  
  
Subaru had kept his brother restrained despite Fuuma’s best efforts to goad him into a reaction, which was somewhat of a disappointment. Fuuma had missed Kamui’s company more than once in the intervening worlds, the constant promise of a challenge and a pleasure on the horizon to which he had grown accustomed now pointedly absent. His brother really does have a habit of mucking things up for him, without even trying at all.  
  
Of course, Seishiro also has a habit of mucking things up when he is trying very hard to do so, and Fuuma suspects this is the case when he appears not ten minutes after the vampire twins, and half a minute after Fuuma finally gives  up on getting Kamui to _do_ something. The situation, predictably, had quite escalated after that.  
  
And it’s times like this, with Kamui looking exceptionally murderous toward Seishiro and Fuuma both, his brother at the ready to defend behind him but looking only at Seishiro, Seishiro smiling condescendingly at Fuuma and ignoring Kamui entirely while talking to Subaru, that Fuuma wishes the recurring characters in his life would take things a little less seriously, because all the murder threats that are being thrown around age far too fast. He can’t fathom this whole obsession business, anyway - Kamui’s against Seishiro, Seishiro’s with Subaru, and so forth. Missing someone is easy and unavoidable enough; habits are difficult to change whether they’re things or people. But to give up everything for the sake of one person - well, that’s something else entirely. Trading an eye for a chance to confront a dense boy about the long-gone past seems more like insanity, in the same way that giving something precious up in order to delay the inevitable is incomprehensible. It is hard to understand anyone giving up something that way, even though Fuuma too has the power to cross dimensions. Paying in installments is so much more like a trade than a price. It’s long term, of course, but Fuuma is not in pursuit of anything except perhaps novelty, and the jobs he takes on are often just as interesting as the ones he discovers on his own.  
  
People, like the ones literally standing between him and the next part of his payment for these adventures, only tend to complicate matters, even if the complications are occasionally enjoyable.  
  
“I am here for the same reason as you are,” Seishiro is saying to Kamui from his perch on the dilapidated altar, always seeking the higher ground. “This area’s legend of an outcast blood-drinking cult and its one lasting relic isn’t kept a secret.”  
  
That phrasing makes Fuuma, who has actually read the ancient legends and researched his job instead of showing up at the cathedral an hour after arriving in the new world, want to laugh out loud, though he settles for an exceptionally wide smile. Best to not provoke anyone just yet - despite earlier attempts to goad Kamui - because worst case scenario is one treasure hunter in the middle of a three-way vampire fight and the grail is lost forever, and the best case scenario still leaves him as the center of a very dangerous fight he’s not so sure he can get through unscathed.  
  
“Now, friends, if you could just clear out for a moment while I take care of something,” Fuuma says, moving slowly and deliberately toward the altar where his brother is still perched, “that would be really wonderful of you.”  
  
Kamui steps forward. “You’ll stay right there.”  
  
Fuuma puts his hands up. “Whatever you say, love. Although I _was_ here first.”  
  
“I don’t think you’re helping your own case here,” Seishiro says to the side, though his eyes are now on Subaru, who has looked away.  
  
“ _You’re_ not helping!” Kamui shouts. Subaru winces.Fuuma begins to wonder if Yuuko knew about this when she requested the grail, but guesses the answer is either yes or hitsuzen or probably both, so it’s a moot point.

But now Seishiro has Had It with the situation it seems, and leaps toward Subaru - is it a vampire thing, to be able to jump like that? - past Kamui. This opens up the altar for Fuuma, but the others are still blocking his only exit and he would really rather prefer to deliver the item instead of whisking it off to the next world. Plus, trouble aside, this is a rare opportunity. He blocks out whatever yelling Kamui is doing for the moment and vaults the altar; there’s nothing on or around it, but since he didn’t come in half-blind to this little investigation, he also knows that there is supposed to be a removable stone right in the middle, which he pulls out with a little help when one of his companions gets thrown into the front side of the altar, though he’s not sure which. He hopes it’s his brother, who deserves a good beating around like that once in awhile.  
  
There is some arguing about Seishiro’s true intentions while Fuuma is focusing on dislodging the grail from its location - really, two thousand years and untouched, it’s quite impressive what condition it’s in -  and as he’s packing it in cloth and stowing it away in his bag there is the very strange sound of Subaru yelling, so that when Fuuma stands again it’s now Subaru who is stepping between Seishiro and Kamui, and Fuuma wonders how many worlds it’s been for Subaru since leaving the reservoir.  
  
He walks around the altar this time, and finds that several slabs of stone which had just previously made up the old patterned floor have come dislodged by some horrific, unfathomable feat of strength, which makes him want to sigh deeply over treasures lost. Kamui is standing on the front pew, and Subaru is facing him, defenses down, standing in front of the man they had given up a price to escape.  
  
“Please stop,” Subaru says, very, very softly. And faced with his one real weakness, Kamui carefully and slowly makes an effort to look as if he is not about to rip out someone’s throat, retracting claws and straightening from his fighting stance. Fuuma wonders what it must be like to love your family like that, what it must be like to wish so hard to protect something; it makes him feel very strange. “Let us go, Kamui, for now. I will meet you later, alright? I’m sorry this hurts, but - I can’t deny myself my wish. I love you, you’re my brother, but there is no way everyone can be happy... And I want to take care of my own happiness. So please, let me go.”  
  
Kamui looks as if he is about to yell again, but stops, and in a sudden moment seems to collapse in on himself, the weight of many years and many sacrifices knocking the fight out of him. “Go then,” he says, eyes hard. “But if you don’t come back tonight, I will find him and kill him. I swear it, I will.”  
  
Well, Fuuma hadn’t expected that, or the unfamiliar kind of seriousness on his own brother’s face, so different from both the false humor and the intense determination he usually wears. Such a curious thing, obsessions.  
  
Subaru smiles half-heartedly, lets his arms down to his sides. “Thank you. I promise you that much, Kamui.”  
  
And so Kamui steps down from the pew, and moves toward the wall and so toward Fuuma, and watches his brother leave with the man he hates most in all the worlds, and there is something so entirely novel in that expression to Fuuma. With the grail in his coat and a new kind of understanding coming slowly, Fuuma is beginning to think maybe there’s something out there worth chasing after all.


End file.
